According To Harman's Argument Is A Good One?

The philosopher Gilbert Harman argues for skepticism about morality, claiming that moral observations are not reliable and shouldn’t be trusted since the is no good reason to believe otherwise. By holding this view there is then a lack of evidence for or against moral disagreement. I will argue that Harman’s argument is a good one. In this essay I will explain Harman’s argument, I will then propose objections to show how it might fail and argue why as to why the criticisms wouldn’t succeed. According to Harman observation requires belief and while physical facts can help explain the things we observe, moral facts don’t. On his paper he attempts to differentiate observations in science from those in ethics to support skepticism about moral facts. He explains that when we judge a situation in ethics we move directly to the moral judgement, we see a situation as wrong as a direct observation that the act itself is wrong with no required reasoning. Therefore, our judgements reflect our own moral framework, not the right or wrongness of the act.

To do so, an observation must count as evidence by supporting the claim that P if the best explanation of what caused the observation includes the fact that P. So we can have knowledge of moral facts only if it is possible for there to be an observation such that the best explanation of what caused the observation includes a moral fact. It is not possible for there to be an observation such that the best explanation of what caused the observation includes a moral fact. Hence, we cannot have knowledge of moral